Assessment of the impacts of extreme weather events upon the pan-European infrastructure to the optimal mitigation of the consequences

A number of extreme weather events (EWEs) have made the resilience of the critical infrastructure of priority concern for infrastructure owners, operators and other decision makers. In this context, the European research project RAIN has studied the EWEs and their impacts upon land-based infrastructure in Europe, and developed a Risk-Based Decision Making Framework with the final goal of mitigating the consequences. This paper presents the main findings of the RAIN project, such as established thresholds for EWEs in the face of a changing climate, decision support tools for infrastructure owners and operators, crisis coordination and response planning based on recent cases, risk-based decision making, technical solutions for risk mitigation, and their implementation considering the current status of European infrastructural elements and networks. The outputs of RAIN aid decision making in the long term, securing new robust infrastructure development and protection of existing infrastructure against climate change and more frequent occurrence of extreme weather.